


Iron Man to Mechanic

by Gyptian



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Post-Iron Man 3, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 17:44:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyptian/pseuds/Gyptian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Tony Stark's encounter with the Manderin leaves him irrevocably changed, it's time to retire, sort of. Loki Laufeyson returns to Earth on a personal quest. </p><p>This fic explores what sort of superhero Tony Stark will be after Iron Man 3, because it's clear he's reinventing himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iron Man to Mechanic

**Author's Note:**

> ~Yadah~ is Tony and JARVIS speaking to each other.
> 
> “Yadah” is normal speech.
> 
> Yadah (italics) is internal monologue or emphasis.
> 
> This fic was conceived as a bridge between Iron Man 3 and a Tony-reinvents-himself story I've written and rewritten that it's now a different story with similar characters. So I'm eliminating the series idea.

*”*”*”

 

**Prologue**

 

*”*”*”

 

~Full integration has been achieved, Sir.~

 

I exhale a breath that's already gone way past its due date sitting locked up in my lungs. Nerves, what do you do about them? “Cool. What about your remote servers?”

 

~Clean Slate phase two is also complete. Of your creations, only Dummy remains tangible, sir.~

 

“Cool. Yeah.”

 

~You realise you have deliberately given yourself multiple personality syndrome.~

 

“I did not!”

 

~I am but an extension of your mind sir, now housed in your body.~

 

“You were always more, Jarv. Yeah...no! Jarvis, we're separate entities. Occupying the same physical space in no way makes us two masks on a single actor. Come on! Quantum mechanics, man!”

 

~Of course, sir. How could I ever think differently?~

 

“That you can only proves my point.”

 

*”*”*”

 

**Morning After the War**

 

*”*”*”

 

After Tony Stark saw Bruce Banner out the door, he settled down to work. Pepper Potts was in the middle of selecting a new head for Stark Industries. She wanted him to go through the candidates. “You're the owner. You're the name on the building. _You will have input, Mr Stark.”_

 

“Yes, Mrs Stark,” he'd muttered, and she'd looked at him.

 

And smiled.

 

“Only if you're _very_ good.”

 

Which, he had to admit, was good motivation.

 

*”*”*”

 

The thing was, after their fight with the Manderin, neither of them was human anymore. Oh, Tony'd fixed the little glitch in Extremis so Pepper wouldn't explode in the middle of the night, but she'd retained the regeneration, the superstrength, the ability to melt her way down to the Earth's core and survive.

 

And Tony didn't need his metal heart anymore. He'd fixed his body to expel those pesky shards that'd sat around his flesh heart like never-tiring snipers. He slept like the dead, these days. Heh. Pepper'd smack him for that joke.

 

He wasn't like Pepper, after Extremis had its way with him. He'd customised his body customisation, of course. He never used someone else's idea without making it his own. It had been exciting to work on his own body as if he'd been working on a suit.

 

Extremis was the high-tech alternative to the Super-soldier serum, which was why he'd healed Pepper, improved himself and then destroyed it. Because there was only one Steve, and only one Bruce, and now there was them, and that would just have to be enough.

 

*”*”*”

 

Mrs Stark. He could almost _taste_ it. And “only if” was a vast improvement on “in another universe, Tony”. Yeah. He'd wear her down eventually.

 

They needed to retire now, though. It was alright for him to be a freaky, enigmatic, rich genius with a reputation for doing the weird. For Pepper... She'd been inundated with people eager to shake hands with the only super-human who _did_ make appointments, or attack her to obtain some of her blood, saliva, hair.

 

Yeah, isomorphic combs that exploded had put a stop to the stealing of hair. Pepper had _not_ been happy with how many times they needed to replace her handbag.

 

Flying between Stark Industries locations, attending meeting and conferences, it had become a mess of security risks. And the board of directors and employees were now as leery of her as they'd once been of Tony. Superhero owner, yes. Superhuman CEO, no. People were particular that way.

 

So, retirement for them. Living the good life – the married life - disappear into the sunset in a flying car, with Happy in the trunk, holding a “Just Married” sign.

 

Huh. He was getting sappy in his old age.

 

*”*”*”

 

He held out about a quarter of an hour before he eeny-meeny-miney-moed his 'favourite' from among the candidates. Pepper'd ignore his advice anyway. He sent the file, narrow, pale face, shy smile, hair combed back, the anti-Tony, to Pepper and the selection committee.

 

He never noticed the notice-me-not spell shimmering over very familiar features, which was the point.

 

Then he went up to the roof of Stark Tower, Los Angeles - which was not New York, never NewYork – and summoned a little floating board over to himself.

 

~Sir.~ All JARVIS' disapproval in a syllable, so efficient, his AI.

 

“Yeah, hi, JARVIS. I'm going surfing.”

 

He hopped on and sailed down on a high wind that tapered off to a too-hot breeze as he descended. He chased cars on the highway, almost-landing on their roofs and freaking out the drivers of the cars behind him, until JARVIS alerted him to the fact that they'd caught up with Bruce.

 

Tony pursed his lips in thought before shooting on ahead. He knew where Bruce'd get his pre-flight coffee. He'd see him off.

 

*”*”*”

 

“I _am_ Iron Man.”

 

People didn't understand why he insisted that _he_ was the hero, not him in a suit. The media greeted the destruction of his suits and house with worry and grief. Who would guard them, now that the hero they'd come to know, the most visible of the Avengers, didn't have his toys anymore?

 

Bully for them. They didn't like the suits when they were around, and they didn't like it now that they were gone.

 

They never did see what he did. Always in motion, the future is. Wasn't that the best kind of future to have, a chaos of possibilities?

 

*”*”*”

 

Stark Tower, New York had become a monument. They expected him to rebuild it, which he did. They expected him to make it the home of the Avengers, which he didn't.

 

He told them he wasn't an evil overlord. Bachelor pad, yes. Big office, yes. Lair, no. High-profile headquarters, bad, bad idea and anyone who'd worked as long with the military as he had knew it.

 

Avengers scattered until they needed to assemble, that's how it was.

 

Also for Thanksgiving and monthly Sunday Dinners, but that was because Steve made the _best_ stuffed turkey and pot roast.

 

*”*”*”

 

[transcript from _The Genius Ramblings of Tony Stark, Working Title, JARVIS, Come On, I Just Need a Log, Diary, Whatever, Okay? No, Delete That Last Bit. JARVIS!_ ]

 

“Look at professional athletes. There comes a point in their career when they're done inventing fancy moves, and they start refinement, you know, that magical honing of detail that makes the most fantastical stunts look easy. I'm here. This is the point. I'm done with the stunts, the cocoon's off, and all that I am is now being refined.

 

“I've never revealed all that I can do to the larger public. The artificial intelligences, the suits, those were mine, not the continuating of my father's work or meant for other people. And I keep what's mine. So. The suits are gone. I am Iron Man now. Extremis eliminated the need for a high-tech metal exo-skeleton.

 

“JARVIS has been uploaded to the silicon part of me, a secondary nervous system, parallel to the one nature gave me. God, I'm double-wired, now. Weird. If I bleed, the best nanotech on the planet spills out alongside my blood.

 

“I should be scared, perhaps, but I'm not. The future, change, never could.

 

“Only inevitabilities can. Like Pepper's frown when I'm late for dinner. Again. Oops.”

 

*”*”*”

 

“You've been very naughty, Mr. Stark.”

 

“Yes, Mrs. Stark.”

 

“You still haven't convinced me, Tony. I told you to be good.”

 

“I can be. I can be _brilliant.”_

 

“Oh really, Mr Stark? Show me.”

 

“Oh come on, you have a bona fide superhero boyfriend.”

 

*”*”*”

 

**Brave New World**

 

*”*”*”

 

The first thing Luke Nautisson, also known as Loki Laufeyson, new CEO of Stark Industries, learned was that the company was an ethically run business conglomerate that managed to market an impressive amount of innovative products in whatever field it cared to enter. The fields had entered were mostly a record of the whims of Mr Stark, senior and junior.

 

The second thing he learned, after much digging, was disappointment.

 

Nothing in Stark Industries archives or products gave any insight into its owner and chief inventor. Most anything the company sold or kept for internal use was the result of a request forwarded to Mr Stark, tailored to specifications. Requests were fulfilled in no particular order, unless they were marked urgent and personally brought to Mr Stark's attention by Ms Potts. R&D built on Mr Stark's ideas and converted them into marketable products.

 

All products had one thing in common: they showed an originality in thought and an understanding of the universe that had Loki gnashing his teeth. Because he understood the fundamental laws of the multiverse and then bent or even broke them. This man, this mortal, understood them, and worked within them, making them do what he wished without changing them.

 

Yet nothing explained how this man had made himself into one of the protectors of Earth that could defeat Loki. That could turn back an army. That could see the wasteland of the universe, the place that had turned Loki insane, a nuclear missile in his hand, and return alive, sane. That could offer his enemy a drink and a laugh while threatening him, nothing personal.

 

Stark Industries could not tell the story of Iron Man, even to Loki, master of lies and deception.

 

*”*”*”

 

There was once a god who tried to invade Midgard. His army was defeated. He was captured. He served his time on an island where he could not speak, and where his magic could not speak to him.

 

In that silence, the screaming in his head stopped. His mind slowly returned to peace.

 

He dwelled there for a hundred years, while the Earth made a single rotation around the sun. When he was released, he was older than his brother, in age and experience.

 

In the golden halls of Asgard's royal palace, he looked upon his brother with eyes that were clear for the first time since he'd learned he was an Ice Giant.

 

He saw a cheerful man, still foolish and arrogant, but one who meant well and felt the pain of his fellow men. He saw him, and greeted him as a friend. Thor's grin lit the entire hall.

 

He looked upon his father and could see only pain, his own and that of an old man. “I cannot talk to you yet,” he told Odin Allfather.

 

“Then we shall not speak of anything,” the king said, and Loki found that he was free to go, no longer bound by loyalty or hatred.

 

He resolved to reconcile what he remembered of his time under Thanos' influence with what he thought he now knew. He turned away from his father, said farewell to his brother and left Asgard along the hidden paths he'd learned to walk. A petty part of his heart rejoiced in the freedom he had to move between realms, while most of Asgard was stuck in their world after the destruction of the Bifrost.

 

He started his search for the people who had defeated him in the place they'd held him, SHIELD's flying headquarters. It was easy enough to appear in a place he'd left such a strong imprint. He stalked about invisible, and the first two members of the Avengers soon arrived.

 

He observed the spy whose mind he'd possessed and found a man who knew pain, fought for competence and found succour in the company of his friends. His sharp eyes and hands turned him into a formidable marksman, while his sharp mind could pierce the hidden paths in other minds. His memory of this man held true. Hawkeye.

 

He watched the Hawk's partner too, the master spy who excelled in deception, and spun fictions as elaborate as Loki's. He found her to be the same as he remembered, a woman trained to hunt and kill. Only one new thing did he discover. What she called the red in her ledger was balanced by the peace she had found in the present, in fighting for something she believed in with people she trusted. It was a peace that eluded Loki. Black Widow.

 

He left the place unseen, dropping to Earth once the airship hovered over a field close to New York.

 

Captain America was an easy man to understand, once Loki learned to navigate a museum. An honest boy enhanced by a serum so he had the power to fight for what he believed in. The only thing hidden about him was that the soldier from the second world war and the current superhero were the same man.

 

That left two members of the team to investigate, and he'd rather leave the green brute for last.

 

Midgard had libraries open to the public, not just private collections. They yielded a lot of information on Tony Stark and Iron Man. It left Loki frustrated, however, because most stories about Tony Stark resembled court gossip and stories about Iron Man were like the yarns Thor and his friends spun about their heroics. There was little truth to be found.

 

The only part of Tony Stark that seemed accurate were about Stark Industries, the company he owned. _You shall know man by the men that follow him,_ Odin said in Loki's head, which made Loki sneer, but also inspired him.

 

He learned a new kind of lie. A fabricated resume and an application. For a new vacancy, CEO of Stark Industries. He sent his magic into the electronic systems he'd found, to construct an identity for him that he made up for the occasion, Luke Nautisson.

 

*”*”*”

 

After the works of Stark's hands and the records of his company failed to tell Loki anything useful, he turned to the people and interviewed them. _I should have done this sooner,_ he thought sourly, when a senior engineer gleefully informed him, “Mr. Stark always kept the best toys to himself. There's stories about his house being able to speak, you know, old man Stane used to complain about it. And those suits a'his, well, we've only ever been able to get our hands on schematics of the War Machine, and that was an early model. Whatever he's got in his head now, is anybody's guess. His house lies on the bottom of the ocean and his suits are all destroyed.”

 

Frustrating, but a challenge too, which gave Loki a sense of purpose he hadn't had in a long time.

 


End file.
